1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer artificial intelligence (AI) implemented as an inferencing engine and, more particularly, to such inferencing engines used to identify frequently visited objects in a distributed data base by a plurality of diverse users. The invention has particular application to predicting user preferences of web pages and links on the Internet using the World Wide Web (WWW).
2. Background Description
The Internet is a collection of networks that allows users at disparate, heterogeneous computer systems to communicate with each other across organizational and geographical boundaries. The Internet uses a packet switched protocol referred to as the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Full Internet access usually includes five key features; electronic mail (e-mail), logging on to Internet-connected computers using Telnet, transferring files from Internet-connected computers using File Transfer Protocol (FTP), getting access to discussion groups, and using various information-research tools, especially the World Wide Web (WWW).
The World Wide Web is a hypertext-based information service that makes collections of information available across the Internet. It allows Web browser clients to access information from any accessible Web server and supports multiple media types. The World Wide Web can be used to invoke other software by means of embedded hypertext links. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is used to describe static text documents, and a Web browser is essentially an HTML interpreter. A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is basically a network location which tells the user not only where something is (its address), but also what it is. The basic form of a URL address is service://hostname/path which identifies what Internet service is needed to reach the resource, what computer it is located on, and enough detail to find what is being searched for.
With the explosion of information on the World Wide Web, it is difficult for users to find information that is important to them and to avoid encountering information that is not important.
Embedded hypertext links on a given Web page can be used to find information related to the given Web page. By clicking on a hypertext link in one Web page, the user can display another related Web page or even invoke a related program. The problem is that there is no indication of which of these links are important to a user based on the user's specific interests and which are not important. What is needed is a way for all Web hypertext links presented to a user to be scored (i.e., rated) as they are presented. The scoring would be based on the interests of the user and would indicate to what degree they will like or dislike the link.
In addition, since there is a very large number of Web pages already on the World Wide Web and many more are being added every day, it is impossible for a user to keep up with what Web pages are important to them. To alleviate this problem, there are Web pages, often sponsored by businesses, which provide a list of "recommended" Web pages. Often these lists contain Web pages that most users already know about. In addition, the recommendations are for the public in general and once again, are not tailored to the specific interests of a given user. What is needed is a list to be presented which is tailored to a given user and contains Web pages that user has not yet displayed.
The need for such a system could have potential application to other large distributed databases which are not necessarily part of the Internet. For example, large corporate or governmental databases might be more efficiently used with such lists tailored to a specific user's interest.